While official Lebanon refrained from commenting on the eruption of violence in the Gaza Strip following Saturday morning’s surprise Hamas attack on a series of Israeli targets, Lebanese political parties had mixed views on the Palestinian offensive and the Israeli counter-offensive.
While the Moumanaa axis (Iran-Hezbollah-Syria) paid a huge tribute to Hamas for launching the “Flood of Al-Aqsa” operation at dawn, other Lebanese parties took a more nuanced stance.
For Hezbollah in particular, “Al-Aqsa Flood” is “an answer to Arab efforts at normalization with Israel and a message to whom it may concern.” In other words, Saudi Arabia is engaged in direct talks with the Jewish state, under the aegis of the United States, with a view to normalization.
The most curious thing is that a Lebanese official, in this case the caretaker Minister of Culture, Mohammad Mortada, has taken up this argument, vigorously praising on his X account the operation carried out by Hamas against Israel, without the slightest concern for Lebanon’s official position.
In the opposite camp, some, such as the leader of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, expressed fears that Hezbollah would drag Lebanon into this conflict.
These fears were justified by two factors. The first relates to Hezbollah’s statement, which seemed to indicate that the pro-Iranian group was aware of the operation planned by Hamas, since it volunteered to explain the reasons for it. The second is the fact that Hezbollah could come to the rescue of Hamas, as it did during the 2006 conflict, also in Gaza, should the armed conflict be prolonged and Hamas find itself in a bad position.
Others, such as the FPM and former President Michel Sleiman, saw these recurring wars as the result of the refusal to find a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “We must be prepared for all eventualities,” declared Mr. Sleiman, while the FPM considered the Hamas offensive “normal in the face of injustice” and that Israel “must understand that it will be impossible for it to protect its existence in the absence of a just and comprehensive peace, based on the right of the Palestinians to have their own State.”
However, this view is not shared by the PSP, which believes that “Al-Aqsa Flood shows that the size of Israel’s military arsenal is still less than the determination of the Palestinian fighters who are facing up to the Israeli war machine, Arab defeatism and incomprehensible Arab normalization.”
For the PSP, it is no longer possible to “bank on a two-state solution when Israel refuses to grant the Palestinians their rights.” “What is needed is a unified Palestinian position against the occupation, without making concessions, to wrest its rights by force, the only language the occupier understands,” said the party chaired by Teymour Joumblatt.
